hi there. i trade with IB using windows and right now i'm using cable broadband which says download speeds up to 3mbps. it works fine (usually) excpet when it seizes up.anyway there is a new two way broadband satellite coming out that says download speeds up to 1.5 mbps. i was just wondering if this an acceptable level of mbps? i track probably 20 symbols or so.just futures. the reason i'm trying to figure this out cause if the satellite has enough mbps then i can move out to the country and not be stuck in the city where i can only get high speed internet. thanx alot for any help. appreciate it!
satellite download time is fine. It is the upload that sucks. I found it unacceptable for trading. If execution speed is not a requirement then I guess it would be all right.
Latency on a satellite connection will kill you if you rely on speed for part of your edge. The signal has to travel to the satellite and back to earth. This takes time. Do a search for a wireless broadband connection in your area. Better technology and lower latency. This link has a bunch of listings for wireless ISPs: http://www.onelasvegas.com/wireless/ Bob
Actually, with satellite connection the biggest problem is network latency. That is, all your quotes received will be a little more delayed, and whatever order you send will get a little delayed to your broker as well - compared to broadband network connection. Equally, that is why e.g all the good players of online games like starcraft, Half-Life etc. all use wire-connected mice and keyboards - and not wireless counterparts. So, if latency is really important - e.g for automated trading or client-side triggers - then it might be a little more trouble depending on what kind of market and strategies you work with. Otherwise - the bandwidth is no problem with the newer satellite broadband systems - which also use return channels nowadays. Check out DVB-RCS for that. E.g www.dvb.org . The US doesn't use DVB for it's digital satellite broadcast system - but uses the DVB-MHP standard for interaction - or at least was going to do so - last time I checked. Check out ATSC for US digital sat. info - or ISDB if you're in Japan. Brazil was rumoured to be planning their own digi-tv standard as well - so they can make all their hardware in Brazil - just like they do with the low quality TVs here and the peculiar PAL-M standard (I used to invest in digital TV satellite equipment providers and was at first surprised by this - until I got to know brazilians better). The point is - be careful about committing too much resources on cutting edge technology on new frontiers. Otherwise the IEEE 802.16 wimax wireless network standard is starting to get some momentum and frequency auctions have been held - which also provides good bandwidths over large areas at low cost. Check out e.g www.wimaxforum.org . With 20 futures - you're fine with 256 or 512 Kbps - but be sure to have at least 256 Kbps return channel - or 512 Kbps with 1Mbps so that you can efficiently send orders and other network traffic - like email, instant messages etc. If you get into trouble with varying network loads, critical latency traffic like futures trading and use a lot of capacity demanding services like e.g IP-telephony, streaming multimedia etc. then you might want to consider a traffic shaping network router. Check out the Linksys WRT 54GS for a very cheap version of this which even runs open-source Linux-based routing software. This will throttle different network services for you. You can do a search in this forum for more links which I provided earlier on this router.
the one i'm looking at is the new anikf2 ka. it says it has .5mbps upload. its not in service until spring 2005.
Question for any of you guys using satellite broadband... How do these services perform on rainy, cloudy days? How about during thunderstorms? Thanks!
Here we go again! True satellite adds to latency. For how many of you does this really make a difference? I am a VERY fast trader. I can tell you, for me, adding 1 second will not make much of a difference. If it would, it would be high time to scrap my current strategy and start over again. I don't believe in hairtrigger fairy tales mixed with game playing babble. Poor performers may try to explain their habit to latency. Fast robust systems should be able to cope with reasonable latency values.